


That's Where I'll Be Waiting

by kataurah



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Dream Sex, Established Relationship, F/M, Introspection, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 17:09:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17227988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kataurah/pseuds/kataurah
Summary: "You know that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you. That's where I'll be waiting."





	That's Where I'll Be Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> This fic started several months ago, inspired by a poem by Tyler Knott Gregson (which I'll put in the end notes) and was completed when I randomly remembered the Peter Pan quote in the summary and started crying. So... that's the general vibe of this story. Sorry? Comments and kudos appreciated, even if you're crying with me.

When Abby wakes, she will remember dreaming.

She dreams for all of the blink of an eye and a hundred and twenty five years, and somehow her sleep lasts forever and no time at all. People who have woken from a coma, she knows, will talk of how their internal clock kept ticking, of sensing the passage of time without being present for it, but instinctively knowing upon waking that the world has shifted.

She does not ask anyone else if they dreamt too; it might be that cryo sleep is not the same experience for everyone. The biology is the same, of course: you close your eyes, you breathe once more, then your entire system is suspended, frozen in time, until you wake seemingly mere moments, and however many years, later.

She does not ask, because the only person she really wants to hear an answer from remains asleep, and it feels as though she's left him behind in that in-between space she remembers. Abby would rather go back there - back to where she could feel Marcus Kane's presence so completely and profoundly she could not tell where she ended and he began - than suffer this waking reality without him.

She wonders if Marcus knows that the world has ended. That humanity has destroyed the Earth once and for all. Is he aware of time passing or does he perhaps choose to remain oblivious? Perhaps, after everything, after being so thoroughly worn down and defeated, he cannot find the will to wake up. Abby remembers too, how she felt awakening after praimfaya: to find that she had to keep going, that her fight wasn't over, how not even Marcus' steady pillar of love and strength could prevent the aching tiredness dragging down her body and soul.

She heard that same exhaustion in his voice, the last time they had a conversation. Before those desperate, gasping words when Vinson -

Before Abby had curled herself around his broad back, hitched a leg over his hip and buried her face in the thick, overgrown curls at the nape of his neck. For all that Marcus clutched her hand tightly against his chest that night, she would not blame him if he let go now.

Perhaps he's just waiting for her.

In dreams they found each other, as they always do. Abby's senses were suffused with him; his smell and taste, the press of his bare skin against hers and the whisper of her name on his lips were all pure, distilled Marcus. She looked into dark brown eyes that held no trace of guilt or pain, only joy and a love so intense it still makes her breathless after all this time.

They caught fire together, every touch and caress burning, consuming, even as they crested again and again like waves upon the shore. Warmth and pleasure and peace stretched out infinitely and Marcus' arms were sanctuary, home, bringing all their broken pieces back together. Abby was all at once drifting apart from her body, merging with him, yet powerfully aware of Marcus setting every single one of her nerve endings alight. She felt the touch of his mind and his soul just as surely as his fingertips brushed every inch of her skin. They murmured apologies and affirmations into kisses, both urgent and indulgent, that spanned decades.

It could not be real... could it? Abby recalled the softened, blurred edges of a dream, but Marcus beside her, above her, inside her was real and raw and _visceral_. They could not have spent over a century with their souls in communion, and yet they talked and teased and laughed... They fought and made up and that's how she knows it was _him_.

She reached out for Clarke in that timeless void; she knows she did because those were the only moments she felt pain, like a piece of her was still missing no matter how much Marcus held her, comforted her. But Clarke's absence was an ache she'd grown used to, something she'd learnt to bear those long years in the bunker - and before then, on and off, since she sent her daughter to the ground - as long as Marcus was by her side.

Now she sits by _his_ side - clutching a hand that's still warm, fingers tracing a pulse that still beats - but missing him so much it feels as though she's being torn apart.

Abby can't _feel_ Marcus like she did in their dreams. She can't _see_ that surprisingly mischievous smile dancing behind his eyes anymore, she can only recall an image, terrified of it fading. She tries desperately to keep the memory of his voice strong and clear in her mind.

"You saved me," She remembers him saying, echoing words from long ago.

"You saved me too," She answered: a truth she knows down to her bones, like her love for him,  
part of the ongoing journey they've taken together.

A smile on a breath, a look of pride in his eyes, "No, Abby, you saved yourself."

"I can't -" She can't remember what she was trying to say. _Lose you. Keep going without you._

"It's okay." His hands on her face, lips on her forehead, words pressed into her skin. "You'll always find me here."

Somehow they've loved each other several lifetimes over, but Abby watches him sleep on without her and knows it'll never be enough.

"Wherever you are, I'll find you."

**Author's Note:**

> "We make love in my dreams,  
> and time isn't really time  
> there; there are years   
> that pass between one touch  
> and another.
> 
> Had a kiss once  
> that spanned two decades,  
> three weeks reserved   
> for a single  
> sigh." 
> 
> \- Tyler Knott Gregson


End file.
